You know I’m really tired of fawning corporate media peddling the Hollywood/Tea Bag Republican version of American history: the lone wolf settler crossing the continent, building farms, towns and industries. It never happened like that. Early Americans were socialists, only they didn’t call themselves that. The government picked economic winners and losers throughout our history, and still does, even by giving tax loopholes to outsourcers.

And Michelle Malkin never would have gotten where she is without taking advantage of “affirmative action” set-asides for Filipino-Americans.

The Social Security Administration last month told its disability-claims judges they are no longer to seek out information from websites when deciding cases — taking away a tool some of those judges say would help in uncovering fraud.

Agency officials said reviewers can’t trust information posted online, and also said the mere act of typing in queries could compromise protected private information, so they shouldn’t try to access anything.

Social Security’s ban covers all Internet sites, including social media such as Facebook.

When private insurance companies investigate suspected false disability claims they, among other tactics, hire private detectives to follow the claimant around and film his daily activities. Not surprisingly, they come up with video’s of “cripples” reroofing their homes, crawling under their cars to perform repair work, and so on. But an insurance company is protecting the money of its owners while no one “owns” government money once it’s been seized from the poor sap who earned it so it flows out unimpeded. Witness the 93% disability rate for retired Long Island Rail Road employees and now, the Obama administration’s sabotage of investigations. Disability recipients are the fastest growing segment of Social Security payees and Obama is working hard to grow it faster. Julia is waiting for her check!

Pretty encouraging, eh? God bless the good planning of the Obama team. Of course, Biden made that promise two years ago but hey, what’s a little delay when you’re unemployed? What else do you have to do?

In the meantime, Hussein, told that 550,000 unemployed Americans have given up work, was pleased: “that means they no longer count, right? So let’s look at the bright side: unemplyment’s down from 8.2 to just 8.1%!”

Nothing of note to comment on today (of course, to a family buying a home, their purchase is a big deal, but not to the rest of us voyeurs). Four accepted offers, the highest asking $1.495, the rest a million or less. A scattering of new listings, all at $1.5 and below and …that’s it. As for buyers, they’re still out there but it’s a scene from the end of a rummage sale, people picking through the leftovers that no one else wanted, maybe looking them over and then tossing them back in the bin. We’re in for a quiet summer.

Home owners who procrastinated listing their houses might actually be well served by the delay because by definition no one wants the current crop of houses at their present price. You show up with fresh meat reasonably priced and those disappointed buyers will flock like seagulls to a garbage dump.

But do it now – private schools are closing, public schools will close in June so our kids can work on the farm and everybody will be gone. Hurry, hurry hurry.

39 Patterson Avenue is a great old house in an excellent location but it’s dated and will require a lot of work and even more money to bring it up to date. So it hasn’t sold in the past year at its unbudging price of $4.150. Today the owners budged and have reset their price at $3.995. Don’t do this! Feel free to ignore any of my opinions on the right price for a property or even (especially even) my politics, but trust me on this: if you can’t sell your home for $4.150, a measly price cut of $155,000 is just pissing in the wind – utterly futile, except you’ll get your pants wet.

If $150,000 was going to do it, someone would have bid that by now. The fact that you haven’t sold in twelve months means that you are way out of line with comparable homes. Worse, your inflexibility for the past year, refusing to accept reality and sticking to your first price and then only grudgingly moving off that price a teeny bit sends a message, loud and clear, that you will not negotiate. And we agents get that and understand it. We also – or I do, anyway, steer our customers away from your property because it would be a waste of their time.

If you want to sell your house, cut your price significantly before it grows old and stale on the market. If you just want to entertain strangers at all hours of the day for the next few years keep your price exactly where it is – you and your price can just stay put.

Facebook to open at 99X earnings. Have any of the traders who are going to buy this thing ever actually used it? I opened an account to keep track of my kids and found it too obnoxious to use and never went back. OK, I’m a guy who no longer watches television so I’m hardly one to opine on the merits of a new idea but from what I read, Facebook users are declining, not growing. The first time the company misses its quarterly earnings, which I predict will happen at the end of its first quarter as a public company, short sellers will be out mansion shopping. Another Groupon.

Just received a call from Jeremy Kaye who tells me he misunderstood (or I wasn’t clear, more likely) my question about 35 Winding Lane. Yes, it was an arm’s-length transaction but the property was held under two names so there were two deeds – I only found one. Real selling price was just as reported, $1.750 million and not $875,000.

I regret the error and have taken down the original post as otherwise it will linger on the Internet forever and confuse things. $1.750 is still a bargain: 30% below what the town estimates is (was) its market value, and just 53% of its original asking price but not the incredible bargain $875 would have been.